The series of romantic letdowns was a contributing factor, but it was the Celine Dion music video for her song “A New Day Has Come” that put the final rift in my relationship with the entertainment industry. I’d been hired on to the three-day shoot as an art department shopper, which meant I rode all around L.A. in my Volkswagen looking for things as if on a wild scavenger hunt. In the video, Celine sings about how a new day has come, the light in your eyes, and other such matters as a montage of international scenery, all shot in Los Angeles, fades in and out. There’s Paris, (Universal Studios), Japan (some loft apartment near Laguna Beach …

I spent most of that morning driving around downtown Los Angeles having no idea it was no suitable place for buying Raisin Bran Crunch. They ran out of product on the shoot after one of the actors O.D.’d on it and had to be transported immediately by paramedics to the ICU of Cedars Sinai for a Niacin overdose when his blood pressure dangerously dropped. The last thing he’d heard before they took him away was that I had been the one to save his life. I’d found him nearly in convulsions in the elevator as I made my way towards my car.

“This actor is dying,” I said to Bill, holding the freight elevator door open with …

“Mom, there’s something I have to tell you.” I felt oddly calm now. I checked my face in the rearview mirror; it was all puffy post-cry.

“Is everything okay?” She immediately panicked at the slightest hint that things weren’t “nice” and “exciting.”

“Sort of. Except I’m not moving to New York anymore.”

“What do you mean you’re not moving to New York anymore?” my mother asked. It had been all set up: she was going to fly from Athens to L.A., get a rental car at the airport and come get me, and then we were going to drive up the West Coast to Seattle, a road trip in honor of the next stage of my life. She’d …

“Are you okay?” Erin asked as we walked to the car post-concert.

“Radiohead gets me emotional, you know? It was just so powerful.”

She looked at me like she understood. This was an acceptable answer.

“Where are you meeting Adrian? I can drop you off somewhere. I have to go meet some friends.”

“I’m supposed to call him,” I said, looking at the black cell phone he’d given me for the first time that evening and noticing I’d missed five calls from his number. “I guess just drop me off at a bar and I’ll tell him to go there. What’s around here?”

“The Dresden is nearby, how’s that?”

“Sure,” I said, pressing the talk button as we slipped into …

Tip # 7. Make friends with the coffee cart guy near your building. There will be days in New York when you will be incredibly thankful that at the very least, the stranger you greet each morning remembers you like your coffee light, with one Sweet’n Low, which may be the only nurturing you get for a while. – Garrison Keillor in his article, “Making it in Manhattan”

When I first moved to an inconspicuous block where Chelsea meets the West Village meets the Meatpacking District, a neighborhood old-time lured me in with a smile that lit up his face despite a dark gap from a single missing tooth.
“Hey, beautiful,” he catcalled. “Are you Persian?” I’m Italian and Jewish, but …